The bicycle empire is regaining ground in Beijing

Beijing. A newcomer to Beijing may have a certain paranoia, mistaken for certainty, that he will be run over. Sooner or later a car, bicycle, motorcycle or tricycle could give him a shove and leave him on the side of the road nursing his scrapes in laughter and amazement, searching for Band-Aids in a convenience store.

The suspicion of a possible accident does not originate (well, not entirely) in the paranoid mind of a foreigner who does not usually ride a bike in her own city. The Chinese capital has 21 million 858 thousand inhabitants who move around by all means (metro, bus, car, scooters), but the bicycle has regained prominence in the oldest areas of the capital.

The traffic in this city resembles a kind of competition whose participants seem on the verge of a collision that never happens. People come from everywhere and get around in different ways. Yes, it is common to see cars with excessive confidence in braking to get through pedestrians and bicycles, even though the latter have some green lights. In the middle of it all, this reckless mechanism makes the city turn in a certain order.

Thus, for a not-so-newcomer to Beijing, the initial paranoia has necessarily become habit and after a few days the adaptation process is over. The classic Wherever you go, do as the Romans do.Getting on a bike and defending your priority against a car that seems overconfident in its brakes no longer seems so far-fetched.

It is no longer surprising to see the constant honking of motorcycles on the sidewalk demanding some kind of priority over bicycles and pedestrians; much less the motorcycle or bicycle that comes in the opposite direction to what is assumed to be the direction of the cycle path and forces one to move to one side – of course, with a proven risk of being pushed by the vehicle behind.

I saw you, but I still have to passone could start the silent dialogue. I’ll keep accelerating and we’ll see, just inches away from what could be a collision, who is less afraid.imagine someone else saying. There is probably no such dialogue and it is more of a monologue. Stop cryingit is concluded.

There is no more rewarding moment in Beijing than when travelling on a bicycle.

The first thing you need to know when riding a bike in Beijing is a bank card and a cell phone with access to mobile data. Unless you have your own bike – for which you probably also used an account attached to a digital platform – you need to have electronic wallets such as Alipay or WeChat (Weixin in China) to unlock the vehicles parked on the sidewalks.

Hundreds of bicycles are found in the surroundings of Dongzhimen. Photo Dora Villanueva

Unlike Mexico City, where Ecobici’s service is tied to parking lots, shared bikes in Beijing can be left on any sidewalk. There is a certain code regarding the ideal – leaving them in boxes marked for this purpose – but in reality they are parked anywhere within the area marked by the applications that rent these vehicles.

The yellow ones are from Meituan, the green ones from Didi and the blue ones from Hello. The further you are on the outskirts of this 16,410-square-kilometer city, the fewer shared bikes you see; but where they do exist, they are hundreds. It is impossible to count only the ones you find around Dongzhimen one afternoon when leaving the subway station; the island of handlebars, pedals and tires make crossing this labyrinth the greatest feat of his life for the owner of the scooter that was left in the middle.

Once you have a bank card and a cell phone with Internet access, you can download some of the apps to use the bikes, or use Alipay, which serves as a means of payment, or WeChat, a multi-purpose app. If you are a foreigner and do not have a Chinese bank account, the first option is the easiest, since the second requires specific residence or identity documents, which few have.

At first, facing a Chinese app for taking a bike is like this, in Chineserequires a translator. Then the process becomes routine: open Alipay, scan the QR code that every shared bike in China has and confirm that the bike will be used. When dropping it off, the same.

Sometimes, if you have a debt from a previous trip, the app forces you to pay before unlocking the bike you are planning to ride. If none of the linked cards work (something very common when using Visa on Alipay), you can send a QR code to someone you know so they can pay the debt and unlock the new credit trip.

There is a technological requirement for riding a shared bike in Beijing, but the other is understanding the movement of the city. The symbol of prosperity in China during the 1970s, the Carrier pigeonseeks to regain spaces, now as an emblem of green development, after an explosive growth in car ownership.

The bike is a means of transport that can make the difference between travelling 3 kilometres in an hour – if you go by car – or 10 minutes if you decide to take a handlebar. Of course, the risk is running into that new motorcyclist coming in the opposite direction and starting an internal dialogue about who will have to move. The debate, which is really a soliloquy, is increasingly muted.

The old rival and the new rider fade away into the background. The focus is on other things when you’re riding a bike in Beijing.

#VideosLaJornada To ride a bike in Beijing you must have a bank card, a cell phone with access to mobile data and have electronic wallets. @Alipay or WeChat, to unlock vehicles parked on the sidewalks.
Unlike Mexico City, where the service of… pic.twitter.com/5TpKeHtwEV

— La Jornada (@lajornadaonline) September 22, 2024